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Abattoir Alternative: Stress-Free Death

  • Spence Cooper
  • April 9, 2013

Abattoir Alternative: Stress-Free DeathStefanie Retz, an agricultural scientist from Kassel University, is conducting a study together with colleague Katrin Juliane Schiffer and the farmers at Bunde Wischen organic cattle farm in Schleswig, Germany.

Spiegel Online’s Günther Stockinger points out that in this study, instead of killing cattle with a sharp blow from a cattle gun followed by bleeding to death at a slaughterhouse, a marksman puts a bullet in the animal’s brain with a hunting rifle.

Using conventional methods, “in the final stage of beef production cows are taken to slaughterhouses and led single file through a chute into a ‘knocking box’ where a large pneumatic gun shoots a steel bolt into the cow’s skull right between its eyes.”

But in some cases, bullocks are only stunned and regain consciousness while it is being bled, skinned and dismembered.

Additionally, when cows first enter the chute they are covered in feces and dirt from lying in their manure filled pens, where pathogens and infectious bacteria can develop.

As an alternative, the operators of the Schleswig farm are proposing what they describe as the “gunshot method” they have “adapted and optimized” together with the researchers from Kassel University.

“It all goes very quickly and smoothly,” says Retz. “In this cold, damp weather, it’s easy to see when they’re no longer breathing, because clouds of condensation don’t form in front of their nostrils,” she explains.

Retz says the idea is to allow for a stress-free death in which animals die in the same place they lived.

“Especially for grazing cattle that aren’t used to being penned up,” she says, “being transported to a slaughterhouse and then held in position so the blow can be struck amounts to an enormous ordeal.”

Retz explains that a group of cattle stand together in an area enclosed by a solid wooden fence and an earthwork wall. The maximum distance between the cattle and a marksman working from an elevated hunter’s blind is 33 feet.

“Previously, the cattle have sometimes received feed in this particular pasture, so they are accustomed to both the wooden shelter and the open-air enclosure around it. Their last day begins just as innocently as every day before it.”

The marksman must often wait until one of the cattle is in precisely the right position.

“The marksman needs to be familiar with the anatomy of cattle and able to strike a certain spot on the forehead so that the animal is stunned instantly, and in most cases already dead,” says Retz. “This isn’t something just any amateur hunter can do.”

The researchers from Kassel have attended over 40 such operations at the pasture. “According to our findings so far, this method is pain-free for the cattle,” Retz reports. And the others in the group don’t erupt in panic when fellow bulls fall.

Once the study is complete, the farm plans to continue its gunshot slaughter method weekly. “We’re doing this in the animals’ interest,” says Gerd Kämmer, the organic farm’s business manager.

“For us, this is the logical extension of raising animals in a humane way, all the way through to death.”

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